“It felt like hundreds and hundreds of needles going into me. Probably taking samples, you know? DNA, maybe?”

His face began to crumple. He looked up, as though looking past the ceiling to the heavens above.

“Why me!” he shouted. “Why did it have to be me!”

A couple of other detectives sitting at desks across the room looked over. Duckworth put his hand back on the man’s arm. “Brian, look at me. Look at me.”

Gaffney lowered his gaze to look into Duckworth’s eyes. “I’m sorry if coming here was the wrong thing.”

“It wasn’t. I’m going to try to help you. Let’s get back to those needles. Why do you think that was done to you?”

“My back,” Gaffney said. “It’s really sore. It feels all scratchy, you know? Stings like hell.”

Duckworth, with some hesitation, said, “You want me to have a look?”

Gaffney hesitated as well, as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. After a moment, he said, “If you don’t mind.”

They both stood. Gaffney turned his back to Duckworth, untucked and unbuttoned his shirt, then yanked it up over his shoulders.

“How’s that?” he asked.

Duckworth stared. “That’ll do.”

Tattooed crudely on Gaffney’s back, in black letters two inches tall, was:

IM THE

SICK FUCK

WHO KILLED

SEAN

Duckworth said, “Mr. Gaffney, who’s Sean?”

“Sean?” he said.

“Yeah, Sean.”

Gaffney’s shoulders rose and fell as he shrugged. “I don’t know nobody named Sean. How come?”

THREE

CAL

I knew the name Madeline Plimpton.

She was old-stock Promise Falls. I wasn’t exactly an expert on the town’s history, but I knew the Plimptons were among those who’d established the town back in the 1800s. I knew they’d founded the town’s first newspaper, the Standard, and that Madeline Plimpton had the distinct honor of presiding over its death.

I didn’t know why she wanted to see me. She wouldn’t say in our phone call. Clients don’t usually want to talk about these things over the phone. It’s hard enough doing it in person.

“It’s delicate,” she explained.

It usually was.

I wouldn’t call her place a mansion, but it was pretty upscale for Promise Falls. A Victorian-style home built back in the twenties, probably four or five thousand square feet, set well back from the street, with a circular driveway. It was the kind of place that, at one time, would have had a black jockey lawn ornament out front. If it had ever actually had one, someone’d had the good sense to get rid of it.

I was behind the wheel of my new, aging Honda. I’d traded in my very old Accord for a merely old Accord. This one was equipped with a manual transmission, and shifting through the gears allowed me to imagine myself as someone younger and sportier. My first car, some thirty years ago, had been a Toyota Celica with a four-speed stick shift. Every car I’d had since had been automatic, until now.

I parked out front of the main double doors, my car outclassed by a black Lexus SUV, a white four-door Acura sedan, and a BMW 7 Series. The combined value of those three cars probably exceeded my total income for the last two decades.